


paper, pens, and the mortifying ordeal of being known

by takecourage



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, The Lonely Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives), canon typical amounts of tea, martin's poetry, the inherent romanticism of being followed into the physical manifestation of loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27646769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takecourage/pseuds/takecourage
Summary: The tide ebbs and flows. The fog circles.Martin is what he has always been. Lonely.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 39





	paper, pens, and the mortifying ordeal of being known

**Author's Note:**

> cw: brief suicidal thoughts

It’s cold.

And quiet.

So quiet.

So cold, so quiet, and Martin is so alone.

A note on a cup of tea, left to go cold.

_— Look after yourself._

An uncomfortable chair in the reception of a nursing home.

“She’s not feeling well today, love.”

A pen in his hand, an empty notebook on his desk; low light and no heating.

_It’s quiet_

_Always so quiet_

_I should’ve seen this coming_

Dark, twisting corridors and frantic breaths. A smile like breaking glass. A hand in his.

“Haven’t we been here before?”

_It feels like a bad dream_

_All moving walls and crawling carpets_

Dying batteries and the bright yellow door that follows them. Impossible turns and shifting floors. A constant stream of promises that couldn’t be kept.

“Haven’t we been here before?”

_Running,_

_but never fast enough_

A cup of warm tea in cold hands. The sound of traffic. Martin, staring out the window.

He thinks about giving away all his food, about packing all his things into boxes and neatly labelling them. He thinks about deep cleaning his entire flat, about sealing three letters and laying them on the table. He thinks about walking up to the roof, breathing in the cold, about not looking down, but looking across — the sky, the houses. He thinks about jumping. He thinks about all the things he can never do.

_Hiding,_

_but never well enough_

The tide ebbs and flows. The fog circles.

_You were right behind me, I—_

Martin is what he has always been. Lonely.

_I should’ve seen this coming_

Always hovering nervously at the edges of everything, too afraid to reach out. Even if he did, self-loathing would slap his hand away. He writes, fills notebooks on notebooks with spilled ink, but the words shift, change, and won’t act like he needs them to; they don’t look _right._ It travels up, through the pen, the tips of his fingers, into his hands. His reflection, staring back from a dark window. It doesn’t look right.

_I can live at the edges_

_The soft, silent spaces between_

Fourteen and cutting all his hair off with blunt kitchen scissors. Some of it falls in the sink, gets wet, separates and sticks everywhere. Running a shaking hand through it, feeling it ragged and uneven at the back, chunks of it falling like snow onto the tiles. The fine strands that stick to his collar, his nose, and itch. His reflection still stares back. It starts to look a little better, but still not right. Mum doesn’t notice, and his hair grows back out.

_I’m sorry you’re scared_

_I am, too_

Forcing smiles and look, mum, I made this for you. The muffled thump as it hits the floor. It took him weeks and still she insists he doesn’t care about her. An apology for not bringing all the things she wanted last time, but he has everything and more now.

“You’re smothering me,” she says. “Let me breathe, Martin. I can’t breathe.”

_You cut me open but_

_I try and stitch you_

_back together — you snap_

He said goodbye, but he didn’t think it would be. And when he’s sat by himself, no company but the sky growing dark and the clock, ticking, he remembers the set of Tim’s jaw, the square of his shoulders, the grim determination in his eyes. He wanted to take his hand, to make him promise to come back. From across the room, his reflection, finally his, but wearing a fake, shaky smile, stares at him, and he breaks into a thousand tiny pieces.

_That the world doesn’t work like this, that_

_I should’ve seen this coming_

Clearing out desks and there’s a polaroid, tucked between the pages of a battered copy of _Watership Down._ It’s Tim, bright-eyed, with his arms thrown around Martin and a woman he doesn’t recognise. Underneath, Tim’s impeccable handwriting, reads _Martin, me, & Sash!_

She’s laughing, her eyes squeezed shut, blurred at the edges, and Martin is laughing with her, and Tim is the only one looking at the camera, the smug grin of someone who just told a particularly awful joke on his face. Martin remembers that joke. He remembers the picture being taken. He remembers _Sash_ looking completely different. He looks at picture-Martin looking at picture-Sasha with love in his eyes, and he laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs until he starts crying. How can he love someone he’s never met?

_Here, this silence_

_Don’t make a sound_

It’s colder, quieter now.

He’s scared, but it’s soft, like rotting fruit.

It’s nice.

It feels like belonging. All he’s ever wanted is somewhere to belong.

_This could be a place to survive,_

_Where I don’t need_

_to keep running._

He sits besides Jon’s hospital bed for days, never daring to look away. He brings anything and everything that he thinks might help. A nurse puts her hand on his shoulder, and it’s not pitying, but he looks at the jumbled assortment of blankets and jumpers and fucking teabags in his big plastic bag and wants to _scream_.

“You’re smothering me, Martin. I can’t breathe.”

The tide, the sand, the fog. He could use a notebook, some pens, low light and no heating. Write things down, organise his thoughts. A frantic, scrawled letter to no-one, and his flat in tatters. A high place, distant, separate. The flowing traffic, the flowing waves. Looking out, not down; the houses, the blue.

“Haven’t we been here before?”

_Curl up_

_As the clouds roll in;_

_I should’ve seen this coming_

The Lonely is cloyingly sweet on his tongue, like a prescription painkiller. He can barely feel his hands — scarred, but the scars are fading. The memory of a corkscrew and worms and emergency carbon dioxide and _are you a ghost?_ It’s crumbling at the edges. He grabs at it, but it falls through his fingers, like wet sand. The fog curls around him, a soothing hand smoothing over bandages. Not long now, it promises, not long now.

_It’s always so quiet_

_And maybe I want to let go_

Tape recorders littering the top of a coffin. Lock the door. Feel alone. Disappear.

It hurts. It chokes him. It’s thick and heavy in his veins, leeching into his muscles and soaking into his bones. It consumes everything in its path until there’s nothing left, nothing left but space for it to take up. It pours out his eyes, his mouth, his nose, white and glinting. It wraps around his throat, it steadies his hands until they stop shaking, it covers his ears. He stares at his reflection. It stares back blankly with glassy, milky white eyes. His reflection, that took so long to be able to recognise, is wrong again. He wants to cry, but it takes that away, too.

_Of everything from_

_that tiny dog_

_To you, smiling at my shadow_

His name, faint.

Something calling like it wants him.

But it’s too late. It doesn’t matter anymore.

Nothing matters anymore. And it’s quiet.

_I dreamt about you finding me_

_All that static, humming_

There’s a way out. Jon says there is. He also says he wants to take it, but Martin knows he’s lying, even if he doesn’t know it himself. It’s in the way he keeps saying _we, us,_ as if Martin is somehow coming with him. As if he wants that. Martin catches his own reflection in the glass covering a photo of a landscape that probably doesn’t exist. Cloudy eyes look back, pale and impassive.

Martin would laugh, if he could. He is what he always has been. Lonely.

The fog stills his shaking hands. He looks out, away from everything. It feels familiar. It feels like slipping under anaesthesia, all his memories melting together and the colour bleeding out from all of them, until it’s just grey-white sludge, and he can feel it creep towards his eyes, his mouth, his nose. He doesn’t try to hold onto any of them. He doesn’t want to.

“I’ve been here before.” And he doesn’t want to leave.

_But what survived the fire_

_Will be lost in the fog_

From miles underwater, someone is grabbing hold of him, desperately pulling at his sleeves, saying there’s a way out, saying _we_ and _us_ and _together,_ saying everything he’s ever wanted to hear.

He remembers something, muddled and grey, tiny and trembling at the very back of his mind. Something cold and sweet, but not like the fog, richer. A hand brushing his. A voice, much gentler than he expects and excited. He hardly hears the words over the cadence of it, all the rises and falls and when it catches, sparkling when it flows. He doesn’t want to let it go, but he can feel it being taken.

He tugs at it, and it gives a little. His hands start to shake.

That voice, ragged and frantic but he recognises the rise and fall, the way it catches.

The colour starts dripping onto his hands, muted but getting brighter, warmer.

Shapes start to focus, and the cadence gives way to words, jumbled and messy but he grabs hold of them and doesn’t let them go and they get clearer, and they make sense, and—

_And I’m sorry you’re lonely_

_But I am too._

He could use paper, some pens. Organise his thoughts. Open the curtains, open the window, let some fresh air in. A cup of tea, warm in his cold hands, steam catching the streetlights. Let himself breathe. He looks at his reflection, and he smiles.

A voice. A voice he doesn’t just recognise, but _knows_. Knows it when it’s angry, when it’s laughing and when it’s trying not to laugh, when it’s afraid, tired, apologetic, paranoid, glad, concerned, grateful. Knows it anywhere.

_I loved, and I think_

_you always knew._

“Martin. Martin, look at me,” it says, hushed and pleading and so achingly familiar. “Look at me and tell me what you see.”

“I see…”

_I didn’t see this coming, but_

_“I see you,_ Jon,” he says, tears in his eyes. _“I see you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> here's the poem in full (i wrote it just for this & am absolutely not a poet, but hopefully it worked?):
> 
> Cloud Cover
> 
> It’s quiet  
> Always so quiet  
> I should’ve seen this coming
> 
> It feels like a bad dream  
> All moving walls and crawling carpets  
> Running,  
> but never fast enough  
> Hiding,  
> but never well enough  
> You were right behind me, I—  
> I should’ve seen this coming
> 
> I can live at the edges  
> The soft, silent spaces between  
> I’m sorry you’re scared  
> I am, too  
> You cut me open but  
> I try and stitch you  
> Back together — you snap  
> That the world doesn’t work like this, that  
> I should’ve seen this coming
> 
> Here, this silence  
> Don’t make a sound  
> This could be a place to survive,  
> Where I don’t need  
> To keep running.  
> Curl up  
> As the clouds roll in;  
> I should’ve seen this coming
> 
> It’s always so quiet  
> And maybe I want to let go  
> Of everything from  
> That tiny dog  
> To you, smiling at my shadow  
> I dreamt about you finding me  
> All that static, humming  
> But what survived the fire  
> Will be lost in the fog  
> And I’m sorry you’re lonely  
> But I am too.  
> I loved, and I think  
> you always knew.  
> I didn’t see this coming, but  
> I see you
> 
> — (not) M.K.Blackwood
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
